No Harm Can Come to a Good Man: free sampler

By James Smythe

A free sample of James Smythe’s thought-provoking thriller about the terrifying breakdown of a family in a world that won’t stop moving.

ClearVista is used by everyone to forecast their futures.

Laurence Walker wants to be the next President of the United States. ClearVista will predict his chances.

It will predict whether he's the right man for the job.

It will predict that his son can survive for less than two minutes underwater.

It will predict that Laurence's life is about to collapse in the most unimaginable way.

Discover the eerily-believable world of James Smythe perfect for fans of Dave Eggers, Nick Harkaway and Black Mirror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: May 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780007594498

James Smythe

James Smythe has written scripts for a number of video games, and teaches creative writing in London. His previous novel was The Explorer.

Book preview

PART ONE

1

Deanna wakes up. She lies perfectly still at first, because she loves these moments of being awake, of being in control of everything for just a second, before the day allows itself to interrupt. She can hear Laurence breathing, a harsh snore that’s developed over the past few years into something akin to a growl. She can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest travelling through the mattress. After a while she rolls over and looks at him. He’s still propped up as he was when she was falling asleep, his back against the giant pillows that they have taken to using as a headboard. His reading glasses are hanging off his face and his tablet is on his lap, his hands clutching it. He doesn’t move much when he sleeps these days, she thinks, not since he became a senator. He tends to sleep so heavily that he stays perfectly still. The world could shift around him and he would somehow stay static.

She doesn’t want to wake him yet – the alarm isn’t set to go off for another half an hour, and he needs his sleep for today – so she turns away from him and slides to the edge of the bed. The floor is freezing cold on her feet, the house so draughty, always carrying a breeze up through the floorboards. She pads to the bedroom door and he doesn’t even shift slightly as she opens it and sneaks out.

She heads downstairs, turning the lights on as she goes, straight into the kitchen. The glass along the back wall, looking out onto the garden, is darkened and she flicks the switches on the counter to bring it back to a clear state; no glare from the rising sun, just the light pouring in. She loves the feeling of the warmth of it coming through the glass, heating up the kitchen while she makes the coffee, selecting pods for the machine – they each take a different flavor, and she has to do nothing past setting the thing going. She stands at the counter, both hands on the marble, propping herself up; and she basks for a few seconds. All is silence.

Laurence wakes up as she comes back into the room, because she’s not trying to be quiet now. He feels his glasses on his face and swats them away, a knee-jerk reaction; and then he opens his eyes and looks at Deanna front on. He sleepily smirks at her. This isn’t the first time it’s happened.

‘I slept like this?’ he asks.

‘You did.’

‘I’m so tired. I was so tired. You know.’

‘I know,’ she replies. ‘You need to get dressed. The car will be here soon. I’ll get the shower going for you.’

‘You let me sleep, curse you.’ He reaches for her and pulls her close, kisses her. ‘I wish they’d let me drive myself,’ he says. ‘I feel like such a prick in that thing.’

Staunton is a small town, and Laurence has worked hard to win its people over. He came from the city but Deanna grew up here. When they left college, Deanna pregnant, they came back here at her behest, and he did his best to persuade the townsfolk – who knew her, who had known her parents before they moved away, before he got her knocked up and forced a retreat, law degree between his legs – that he was a good man. He’s spent the best part of the last seventeen years earning their trust. The showmanship of politics sets that trust back a good decade, he thinks. Because New York City is drivable, if there’s ever a TV show appearance they send tinted-window town cars, and that always makes Laurence embarrassed. Every time Deanna has to remind him that he has to get used to it; that if he gets what he wants from his career, he’ll have an armed escort everywhere he goes. Soon he won’t be allowed to drive anywhere by himself. He rubs his face and clambers out of bed. He stretches. ‘What tie, do you think?’

‘The lemon one.’

‘Lemon? Jesus. You want the crowd to turn on me? Start some riot about fence-sitting with my colors?’

‘It’s smart. It’s bright. You want potential voters to think you are as well, don’t you? At least, until they know you as well as I do.’

‘Ha ha.’ She kisses him as she leaves the en suite, and he strips his boxers off. She looks back at him: slightly looser around the edges than he used to be, but not totally out of shape; love handles, a slight belly, a sagging of his chest. It’s only the effects of age, of a more sedentary lifestyle, of being comfortable. ‘You want to come in?’ he asks. ‘I might not wash myself properly.’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage,’ she says. ‘I have to wake the girls.’

She goes to the twins’ room first. Alyx, their youngest daughter, is curled up on her bed, her feet hanging off the side, her arms splayed into a position not far off that of a crucifixion: spread out, extended from the shoulders. Sean, their only son, is almost textbook fetal on the other bed, rolled up as small as possible. Deanna thinks how curiously defensive it is. She wonders if he had bad dreams.

‘Hey, campers,’ Deanna says, ‘it’s morning – rise and shine.’ She raises the blinds and stands out of the way of the window, so that the light can hit her daughter in the face. Alyx giggles, and wriggles herself under the duvet. ‘Nope, not today,’ her mother says, pulling it away from her, ‘you’ve got school.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Alyx says. She’s stubborn and defiant, in that way that kids can be. All three of the children are, something that they get from their father. Sean pulls himself to sitting and then to the floor where he stands in front of the bed, swaying slightly, like a zombie. Deanna goes to him and prods him with her finger, making it rigid, and he tumbles backwards to his bed, collapsing into laughter.

‘You guys have got five minutes to get up and in that shower, or I’ll be back, and I’ll be mad as all get out,’ Deanna says. She tugs on Alyx’s ankle as she leaves the room, and the girl slides down the bed, giggling again; and then Deanna lets her go, and she tumbles gently to the floor.

The next room on her rounds is the bathroom that the kids all share. Deanna flicks the switch for the shower, letting it warm up, and then heads down the corridor to Lane’s door. She knocks on it once, a single, solid rap, but there’s no answer; so she turns the handle. The room is dark, but she can see the clutter through it. The clothes thrown everywhere, the books and vinyl sleeves scattered around the place, her daughter in bed still.

‘I’m awake,’ Lane says. ‘It’s fine, I’m awake.’

‘Just checking,’ Deanna says. The room is painted dark, grays and blacks, because that’s what Lane is into. Deanna opens the door wide and steps in, tapping Lane’s leg through the blanket. ‘Your dad’s got his thing today, so stress-free morning, please.’

‘Fine.’

‘You know what I’m saying. You want eggs?’

‘Sure.’

‘Straight home tonight as well. Like I say, no crap today, okay?’

‘Jesus, okay.’ Lane doesn’t stick her head up to look at Deanna the whole exchange; but she reaches up, to itch her head as it stays still on the pillow. She scratches at the bit where the neck meets the skull, through her hair; and Deanna sees the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, the logo of one of the bands that Lane is obsessed with: three intersecting geometric shapes, a block of symmetrical color in the center of them. It looks like a puzzle, but it’s not (or at least, it’s not one that Deanna’s been able to solve). The tattoo was the first real mark of rebellion from Lane: the lie that she told to be able to get it, and the months of hiding it to pretend that it didn’t exist. But, she promised no more.

Deanna hears the bathroom door slam shut, meaning that one of the twins is doing as they’ve been told, and she tells Lane that she’s next. Lane won’t shower: she’s started cutting back on that now, letting her hair get greasy. It’s a thing, and Deanna knows it’s only a matter of time before she cuts it off. That’s what the kids in her school are doing now, her friends: shaving their hair right back. Deanna’s begged Lane not

Reviews for No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

[nwhyte-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The sfnal element of the plot isn't elucidated terribly well, and that the 384 pages seemed an awfully long journey to an ending that was inevitable from pretty early on. I also thought (this is a more minor and personal quibble) that the depiction of the election campaign machinery was rather crude.

[laine4cunningham · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

No Harm Can Come to a Good Man by James Smythe
HarperCollins, Avail Jun 9, 2015
This novel works on so many levels: suspenseful without losing touch with the internal lives of the primary characters, conceptually significant, and very well written. I wasn’t familiar with this author before being provided with an ARC from the publisher but you can bet he’s on my permanent radar now.
No Harm presents a future that seems not so far away. The internet has been harnessed to provide predictions about common life events ranging from what type of rental car someone will prefer to whether they’ll get a promotion. Since every one of us encounters these algorithms while browsing…always a bit creepy when a news site hands me an ad for a shirt I browsed on some other site because it’s so out of touch with where my mind is while reading news articles...the novel’s concept feels real enough.
This is the backdrop of our everyday lives. And for a time, it seems to only be the backdrop of this novel. A man, a good man, decides to run for president only a year after his son drowned in the lake at the family’s second home. His wife and two daughters go along with his plans, supporting him as only a political family can—by tamping down their personalities with more PR-friendly activities. When Laurence’s campaign advisor Amit encourages him to apply for prediction results through ClearVista’s algorithm, his already somewhat difficult race turns tragic.
There’s the fact that ClearVista returns a 0% chance of success…and then there’s the video. Nightmarish for any father, the video shows the country’s worst terror, that of a war veteran who has finally cracked. While Laurence struggles to prove the video’s prediction wrong, Amit takes a twofold path that shores up his own career while trying to shove his candidate back on track. Laurence’s wife works quietly yet with a strength that cannot be questioned to help her husband and save her two remaining children.
The arc follows Laurence down his increasingly fractured decline along with the wife’s staunch support. Only in the final moments is Deanna forced to turn against him. Amit, meanwhile, is the only one to truly take all their fates into his hands and actively work against the prediction and the social machinery that believes in ClearVista with such evangelical fever.
Emotionally gripping and a true novel for our times.
5 stars!